When they finally took me out of the cast, and after the doctors prodded me as much as their hearts desired and the nurses coaxed me to carefully start moving my limbs, and after I had felt nauseous because they basically spoke to me as if I were a baby, Marcus Kent told me that I had to go stay in the countryside.
"Fresh air, quiet life, inactivity, this is the prescription you must follow. Your sister will take care of you. You will eat, sleep, and imitate the plant kingdom as much as possible." I didn’t ask him if I would ever be able to fly again. Some questions are not asked because one fears the answers they might get. Similarly, during the last five months, I never asked if I was doomed to spend the rest of my life lying in a bed. I feared the cheerful, hypocritical reassurance of the nurse. "Come now, what kind of things are you asking! We don’t let our patients have such conversations!"
That’s why I didn’t ask, and in the end, everything went well. I wouldn’t become a helpless cripple. I managed to move my legs, stand on them, finally take a few steps, and if I felt rather like a reckless baby learning to take its first steps, with trembling knees and as if I were walking on cotton, it was simply from weakness and immobility, and it would pass.
Marcus Kent, who is one of the right doctors, answered what I hadn’t asked. "You will recover fully," he said. "We weren’t sure until last Tuesday, when you had the last detailed examination, but now I can tell you with certainty. However, the recovery will take time. It will take time and, if you allow me, it will be tiring. When it comes to healing nerves and muscles, the mind must help the body. Every impatience, every discomfort, will set you back. And whatever you do, don’t 'push yourself to heal quickly.' If you do anything like that, you’ll find yourself back in some clinic. You must take life slowly and easily, your pace must be legato."